How to find if directory exists in Python

Question

In the os module in Python  is there a way to find if a directory exists  something like    gt  gt  gt  os direxists os path join os getcwd      new folder      in pseudocode True False

User · Answer

Yes use os path isdir path

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We can check with 2 built in functions   os path isdir  directory     It will give boolean true the specified directory is available    os path exists  directoryorfile     It will give boolead true if specified directory or file is available    To check whether the path is directory    os path isdir  directorypath    will give boolean true if the path is directory

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You re looking for os path isdir  or os path exists if you don t care whether it s a file or a directory   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path isdir  new folder   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists os path join os getcwd     new folder    file txt    False  Alternatively  you can use pathlib    gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path   gt  gt  gt  Path  new folder   is dir    True   gt  gt  gt   Path cwd      new folder     file txt   exists    False

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You can also check it get help for you  if not os path isdir  mydir        print  new directry has been created       os system  mkdir mydir

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You may also want to create the directory if it s not there   Source  if it s still there on SO                                                                          On Python   3 5  use pathlib Path mkdir   from pathlib import Path Path   my directory   mkdir parents True  exist ok True    For older versions of Python  I see two answers with good qualities  each with a small flaw  so I will give my take on it   Try os path exists  and consider os makedirs for the creation   import os if not os path exists directory       os makedirs directory    As noted in comments and elsewhere  there s a race condition  ndash  if the directory is created between the os path exists and the os makedirs calls  the os makedirs will fail with an OSError  Unfortunately  blanket-catching OSError and continuing is not foolproof  as it will ignore a failure to create the directory due to other factors  such as insufficient permissions  full disk  etc   One option would be to trap the OSError and examine the embedded error code  see Is there a cross-platform way of getting information from Python   s OSError    import os  errno  try      os makedirs directory  except OSError as e      if e errno    errno EEXIST          raise   Alternatively  there could be a second os path exists  but suppose another created the directory after the first check  then removed it before the second one  ndash  we could still be fooled    Depending on the application  the danger of concurrent operations may be more or less than the danger posed by other factors such as file permissions  The developer would have to know more about the particular application being developed and its expected environment before choosing an implementation   Modern versions of Python improve this code quite a bit  both by exposing FileExistsError  in 3 3       try      os makedirs  path to directory   except FileExistsError        directory already exists     pass      and by allowing a keyword argument to os makedirs called exist ok  in 3 2     os makedirs  path to directory   exist ok True     succeeds even if directory exists

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So close  os path isdir returns True if you pass in the name of a directory that currently exists  If it doesn t exist or it s not a directory  then it returns False

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There is a convenient Unipath module     gt  gt  gt  from unipath import Path   gt  gt  gt     gt  gt  gt  Path   var log   exists   True  gt  gt  gt  Path   var log   isdir   True   Other related things you might need    gt  gt  gt  Path   var log system log   parent Path   var log    gt  gt  gt  Path   var log system log   ancestor 2  Path   var    gt  gt  gt  Path   var log system log   listdir    Path   var foo    Path   var bar     gt  gt  gt   Path   var log       system log   isfile   True   You can install it using pip     pip3 install unipath   It s similar to the built-in pathlib  The difference is that it treats every path as a string  Path is a subclass of the str   so if some function expects a string  you can easily pass it a Path object without a need to convert it to a string    For example  this works great with Django and settings py     settings py BASE DIR   Path   file    ancestor 2  STATIC ROOT   BASE DIR     tmp static

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os provides you with a lot of these capabilities   import os os path isdir dir in   True False  check if this is a directory os listdir dir in      gets you a list of all files and directories under dir in   the listdir will throw an exception if the input path is invalid

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Two things   check if the directory exist  if not  create a directory  optional     import os dirpath     lt dirpath gt     Replace the   lt dirpath gt   with actual directory path   if os path exists dirpath      print  Directory exist   else   this is optional if you want to create a directory if doesn t exist     os mkdir dirpath      print  Directory created

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The following code checks the referred directory in your code exists or not  if it doesn t exist in your workplace then  it creates one  import os  if not os path isdir  quot directory name quot        os mkdir  quot directory name quot

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As in   In  3   os path exists   d temp   Out 3   True   Probably toss in a os path isdir      to be sure

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Just to provide the os stat version  python 2    import os  stat  errno def CheckIsDir directory     try      return stat S ISDIR os stat directory  st mode    except OSError  e      if e errno    errno ENOENT        return False     raise

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Python 3 4 introduced the pathlib module into the standard library  which provides an object oriented approach to handle filesystem paths  The is dir   and exists   methods of a Path object can be used to answer the question   In  1   from pathlib import Path  In  2   p   Path   usr    In  3   p exists   Out 3   True  In  4   p is dir   Out 4   True   Paths  and strings  can be joined together with the   operator   In  5   q   p    bin     vim   In  6   q Out 6   PosixPath   usr bin vim     In  7   q exists   Out 7   True  In  8   q is dir   Out 8   False   Pathlib is also available on Python 2 7 via the pathlib2 module on PyPi

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Yes  use os path exists

[python] How to find if directory exists in Python

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